IMF takes a knife to forecasts for UK growth
If correct the UK economy will have grown more slowly in 2011 than 2010. The IMF’s forecast is well below the 1.7 per cent currently used by the government, writes Faisal Islam.
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A sewing kit, sleeping bag and don’t forget your passport. Channel 4 News Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson on his essential kit as he returns to Japan’s tsunami zone eight months after the disaster.
How have people coped losing their families, friends and homes to the Japanese tsunami? World Vision worker Mitsuko Sobata writes for Channel 4 News about the reality of the tsunami’s aftermath.
As Amanda Knox’s appeal against her conviction for murdering Briton Meredith Kercher draws to a close, her defence team says she has been subjected to the ‘most sinister of speculations’.
If correct the UK economy will have grown more slowly in 2011 than 2010. The IMF’s forecast is well below the 1.7 per cent currently used by the government, writes Faisal Islam.
Six Italian scientists face manslaughter charges following the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009 in which more than 300 people died.
Amid the tumult of re-escalating eurozone crisis, the G7 meets in Marseille on Friday. Just five years ago that would have been seen as a sign for comfort. The finance ministers of the world’s seven most advanced “industrialised” (deindustrialised, surely?) nations meeting to iron out a common cooperative response to the world’s economic problems.
A 7.1 magnitude earthquake strikes off the coast of Alaska.
News of Beyonce’s pregnancy set a new Twitter record at the weekend, outstripping Osama bin Laden’s death and the Japan tsunami. But what really makes Twitter tick?
I was about to say this has been the most intense and packed year for news I can remember. The Arab Spring, the English riots, the killing of Bin Laden, the Japanese Tsunami, the hacking scandal, global economic crises and much more besides has made 2011 feel bewildering, turbulent and exciting. But then I remembered 1991 (Moscow coup, collapse of the USSR, Croatian war) 2001 (George W Bush, British election, 911 attacks, Afghanistan war) and other years I start to wonder : is it the news or the way we see the news now?
One man told us he had come out of “a sense of duty” and there were others who were simply told by their employers that they had to work at Fukushima. “Could you refuse?” I asked one technician. “Well, that would put you in a very uncomfortable position,” he said before adding, “Japanese workers are very obedient.”
So overall, an attempt to centralise decisionmaking over tax, spend and borrowing between France and Germany, as a prelude to doing it across Europe. Which leads me to the Eurobond, the much vaunted silver bullet awaited by many in the markets, the Italians, and are very own George Osborne.
Channel 4 News Asia Correspondent John Sparks visits the Fukushima exclusion zone to find all traces of human activity have been eradicated following Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.
So the economy hasn’t really grown since the end of September. Forget the snow, forget Wills and Kate, park the tsunami. The underlying picture is not of sluggish growth. It’s no growth.
It might be the weather, troubles abroad – or just the legacy of the past. But there often seems to be a reason why the Government’s plans for the economy never go quite to plan.